That's Great About Your Son. Do You Also Do Appliances?

Easter Sunrise, With Laundry.

Easter today is like most other days: I woke early. In an effort to make it feel a little more sacred than other days, I spent my first waking moments outside listening to the birds. If you're wondering which of New England's morning song birds live in downtown Plymouth, the answer apparently is "all of them." We even had a particularly gregarious turkey going at it somewhere nearby... I can hear his gobble somewhere in the distance, gregarious and proud like a big Bostonian in a baseball cap after a couple of Budweisers.

Confession: I'm still outside, watching the sunrise over the clothesline. Yeah... our dryer is broken, and the repairmen are all in quarantine. So it's not particularly scenic, as the clothes line is hung over a construction area. Very cool things are in progress out there, though. There are wheelbarrows, 5-gallon buckets, sawhorses, lumber (including our former kitchen floorboards), and several things that I don't know anything about. Not to worry! This is my future she-shed. When you live with a carpenter who's got good ideas, stuff happens in your backyard every now and then. I'm sure it was the same for Mary; the Bible doesn't say it, but one of the unpublished lost scrolls talks about how Joseph built her a she-shed after the Ascension. For years, it reads, she went there to relax and call her Pickleball friends to chat about that time her Son came back from the dead. (Mind you, after a few months of these calls, they stopped answering their phones.)

Well, speaking of that, today's the day we celebrate that time Mary's lost son came back. That's about the most amazing story a mother could experience. I think of my own life—a crap-ton of loss in the last two years—and I say to myself over and over, I can handle all of this but I just can't imagine how this would feel if it were my own children. I cannot imagine. Please, universe, keep them healthy.

It would be the ultimate loss. And so, Easter is about the ultimate renewal. Lots of folks I know talk about how being at home has given them more time than ever to see their demons. If we've made a few mistakes in our life, or maybe if we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, Easter is here for us. Jesus saves and all that. No worries for everyone else who doesn't do the egg-and-chocolate thing; you have Yom Kippur. We all sin. As my minister friend wrote to me a couple of weeks ago, "Easter only works because we all live in Good Friday." And someone out there forgives us. You can name that God if you like.

This morning, beneath the gently swaying clothesline and the cardinal's distant echo, I offer this Easter prayer:

Dear All-Powerful, 

Thank you for bringing your son back, if only for a couple days. Now that that's all done, could you possibly do something about my dryer? 

Love,
Me